Tuesday, 4 April 2017

Contradictions I've Been Sold

A multi-faceted disease of conflict. At first there are the
obvious internal dialogues, a never-ending stream of contradictory
consciousness. I know something to be true, but I know this same thing to be
false. I say one thing but do another.

Quite rightly this gives me a bad rep. I’m branded a liar,
cheater, manipulative. It’s hard for me to argue I’ve been mislabelled when
faced with such accusations, these things are true, I do them shamelessly and
without second thought.

Fact: your addict, or you the addict, will have uttered the
words “I want to get better, I want to stop, I am done, I never want to take a
drink or a drug ever again”. Something to that effect is said or heard
frequently. I mean, most normal people who’ve had one to many the night before
wake up and say things like “shit I feel rough, I’m not drinking ever again”.

Swearing off alcohol the morning after can be taken with a
pinch of salt, most people would admit they have no intention of going teetotal
on such a whim. You might be seriously considering it though when you open your
eyes, splitting headache, a trembling mess with no recollection of the previous
night. So you come downstairs at midday announcing to your significant other
that you’re getting too old for these hangovers. Last night will not happen
again.

There is no such thing as too much Morpheus.

You chug some water, get an IV, greasy spoon brekkie,
whatever your personal preference, and depending which, you start feeling
better in a matter of hours to days. What’s certain is you do recover, you feel
fit as a fiddle come Wednesday and despite remembering how awful you felt just
a few days prior, you’re on the good side of hump day and decide you will
attend your oh-so-important-social-or-work-related function of superficial surface
encounters and you decide to drink to take the edge off how fucking terrible
this party is. You’re not an alcoholic, you’re sensible, you drink less than
the weekend before, still waking up with a hangover, just not quite of biblical
standards like last time.

Liar. You broke my trust. You promised you wouldn’t do that
again. Fair? Unfair? For me, somewhere in between.

We suffer from a
disease from which there is no known cure. Clearly, there has been a
paradigm shift in recent decades away from the idea of substance dependence as
a moral failing towards its acceptance as a disease. It seems many people today
generally accept addiction as a disease and addicts get better treatment and
support than in days gone by, but I’m not sure how many people really believe
this. Tons of addicts themselves refuse to accept addiction as a disease, so it’s
understandable that normies might be skeptical too.

I accept addiction as a disease. Most diseases target
specific areas of the body, this one targets the part of the brain that
controls decision making. These days, I try to make rational, sensible choices
in my daily life. In the past, I would wake up and wish I hadn’t. I wanted to
die. At this juncture, merely taking some drugs to numb this pain seems a
reasonably sensible choice when compared with the alternative. Today I do not
want to die, but there is sometimes so much going on in my head, it might even
be good stuff, but when it becomes overwhelming and I feel like I can no longer
cope, my instinct is to shut it down.

'Di.' Jeffrey Schaler - During masturbation one may get carried away, forget to aim, and accidentally take a jizzload in the eye, thereby blinding oneself. Medical hoax? I think not.

In the depth of my despair, I say things I do truly mean and
these things are a product of my current state of mind, environment, what I’m feeling
in the here and now. Right now, I don’t feel like heroin would offer me much. I
think I’ve now been on this merry-go-round long enough to accept that heroin is
not the solution, it is merely a solution. A last resort in the event
the plane goes down, it’s my parachute.

I used to say this thing all the time, it went something
like “I want to want it”. I don’t think anyone gets long-term sobriety if they
don’t want it. For so long, I witnessed destruction happening in my life and was unfazed. I was so emotionally disconnected, I could
see what was happening as if I was a bird watching from above. As I watched events
unfold below, I could tell things were nasty, but my little bird brain wasn’t
able to compute the feelings associated with the actions, and so I shrugged my
shoulders and carried on about my business, accepting these events as simply a
part of everyday existence. Destruction was normalized. My rational mind knew that something going on was abnormal, but with an inability to actually feel what was happening I was unable to connect the dots. I knew that I wanted change, but the underlying emotions which would be the catalyst to change were non-existent. Hence the phrase, I want to want it.

Do I want it today? I'm not sure I even know what it is. It’s hard to make good decisions when the irrational becomes
rational.

The podcast about drugs, addiction and dumb shit. The highlight of my week, every week. Check it out if you haven't already, it's hilarious.

Check out Dopey Podcast's exit music if you haven't heard it, Good So Bad, think it sums all this up.

1 comment:

Alex, I hope all is well. I am so mesmerized by your writing. You touch my heart and soul with your words. I pray for you constantly and hold you in my thoughts and prayers. Be well and keep on fighting. Hope to see you soon. Love & Kisses.